A concern following the lifitng of the state of emergency

This is the familiar view of the station building I saw this morning.
It was good to see nothing had changed. That being said, I feel that something has changed inside of me. I'm looking at the scenery with different eyes. I saw people wearing masks, few cars pulling in to the station, and few people waiting on the Shinkansen platform.

The state of emergency was lifted on Monday. Schools, businesses and many other social activities are gradually starting again with new social norms, such as washing your hands, wearing masks, and maintaining physical distance with others. Social life now definitely seems different from the one we cherished.

I hope we can manage this new stage in our lives without any serious cases rebounding.

Checking the requested route on foot

Ahead of the tour for a group of 40 businessmen from India on February 24th, I walked the new route to another subway station from the front gate Nagoya Castle to find out how long it will take me to complete it.  We have to make the itinerary for that tour.

I set my iPhone stopwatch and started walking the new route. It took approximately 16 minutes to get to the subway ticket gate downstairs. Also I found some interesting spots on the way which the guests might get interested in.

A lot of preparation are necessary.

The World of the Woodblock Printer

 (Mr David Stones: from his website)

I made a trip with a group of my friends to the city of Okazaki in Aichi Prefecture by train and  then minibus to visit Mr. David Stones, an English woodblock printer, who first came to Japan 40 years ago and now lives in a very nice Japanese farm house with his Japanese wife on the outskirts of Okazaki.

Their house once had been abandoned. It has been renovated but still retains an abundant atmosphere of Japanese traditional style. 

Mr. Stones'swood-print works are very fine and delicate picturing mostly Japanese local views. 

He introduced us to the wonderful Japanese art of wood block prints and his wife invited us to a tranquil  moment with " Cha no Yu",  a Japanese tea ceremony  in her authentic tea house. Oh I loved the fascinating harp sound from the water basin near the entrance.

He pointed out the serious situation that Japanese people are losing craftsmanship to hand down to the next generation. In fact he has a problem in getting the  blocks of wood used for carving.
Wood block printers use thick woodblocks, called "han-gi" 版木 in Japanese,  of several kinds, depending on the purposes and  printing results. 

The Japanese art of wood prints, like ukiyo-e,  is unique in the way that artists carve many woodblocks for applying different pigments until they complete just one piece of art. 

  

 

 (image from Google)

Two sides of a woodblock should be framed tightly with supporting wood to prevent it from warping or shrinking over the years.  Otherwise  the artist can't  get  the exact result by way of  overlapping different woodblock onto just one sheet of Japanese paper called "washi".  If just one block should ever warp or shrink, it will mean the resulting artwork is imperfect. The quality of woodblocks is so important for a woodblock printer. 

It is so disappointing to know we are losing this craftsmanship. It seems that this is true of many other traditional art and crafts in Japan.  We should take this reality very seriously and figure out how to encourage young generations to keep our traditions alive.

Being blessed with the murmuring of the streams, birds singing and surrounding green hills, we had definitely a great time which we failed to enjoy in the every day hustle and bustle in the city.

Please go to his website to know more about his work from here

Heartwarming wedding party

This was my last volunteer job for the year 2012 and it was a very worthy one.

One day in spring I got an e-mail from a Japanese woman in Australia.  She was looking for a volunteer interpreter for her Australian husband and his family. They were going to have a wedding party in her home city, Nagoya in December.

On that day I met her for the first time, she introduced me to her husband, and to his family.

When she wrote me the first mail, she mentioned that her husband desperately needed an interpreter sitting next to him at the main table during the whole party.  I wrote back to her that it would not be a good idea.  I was pretty sure people would love to see only the happy couple at the main table. A presence of an interpreter may distract the attention. More than anything else, she could be a best interpreter for her husband.  Yet my idea was not accepted.  Her husband explained to me that they would like to spend much time talking and sharing with their relatives and friends and not for themselves.  So their guests found an interpreter sitting next to a bridegroom on the party day.  My colleague then interpreted for his mother and brother at a table of both families.

The whole party was just heartwarming. Although the bride planned everything in detail beforehand, there were some surprises which she never knew of ----such as a speech of her father and a lively entertainment by her ex-colleagues of flight attendants. Welcoming surprises brought them lots of laughter and happy tears as well.

As for my job, most of the time, I translated by whispering to him. Sometimes I just refrained from interpreting on the spot because I wanted him to feel the atmosphere first.  I did so, for instance, when the bride's uncle chanted a Japanese traditional poem. I explained its meaning after his performance.  He made some questions about Japanese culture and this gave me a chance to talk to them about our traditions. 

My role was more than interpreting.  It was challenging for me.  I felt very much thankful that they gave me an opportunity to have a wonderful experience.

Discussion with Guest-speakers

Well, I wrote this post halfway last month.

My days were quite hectic with different activities.

One of these I write here is actually dated back in Nov.  So what? 

Will you forget about a time gap in a story?

I just begin from where I stopped last time.

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At last my busy week was over. I almost forgot this is the last day of the week, Saturday!

Today I went to the study meeting for volunteer interpreters. Actually we had a special event called the International Exchange Meeting. 　We invited two guest-speakers who talked about what they wanted us Japanese to learn about their countries.
A German lady guest talked about production and handling of garbage and cash/cashless payments.  A woman from China talked about one child policy and dangerous food.
Then we had a very good discussion pointing out some crucial aspects to understand the situation and compare with the situation in Japan. The main purpose of this meeting was the active participation of everyone in the discussion.  By asking and answering questions from each stance of three different countries, it was really an enlightening discussion that we enjoyed after all.

Well maybe I'd better update my blog about the discussion today some time soon-----hopefully. It was indeed good to learn something new from someone in a different country.